ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic experience has taught us that the differentiation between the sexes is definitely completed only at puberty. At puberty clitoral masturbation is normally given up, and the renunciation of this erogenous zone is identical with the giving up in favour of complete femininity of the male trends associated with that organ. This pubertal renunciation does not take place without struggles, at the heart of which there is the major event of the first menstruation. The narcissistic wound of the loss of the penis at puberty is wiped out by a compensatory satisfaction of the ego. The increased intensity of the drive at puberty finds both girl and boy at the same active-male phallic phase of development, which in both cases makes its appearance bound to the penis or surrogate penis, the clitoris. The active tendency of the intensified sex drive in puberty, which in man manifests itself in his masculinity, also applies to woman.
